1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information code and an information code reading apparatus that reads the information code.
2. Related Art
Recently, information codes, such as bar codes or QR Codes™, are used for various purposes. The ways of using such information codes are also various. For example, an information code can be optically read by executing a given application in a camera cell-phone or a smartphone to easily acquire the information specific to the information code. Thus, using an information code, users can easily enjoy such services as follow-up research of food, guide to a website, issuance of a coupon or a ticket, and the like.
As a technique for providing services by using an information code as mentioned above, an advertisement apparatus is well known as disclosed in JP-A-2001-273441. This advertisement apparatus produces a code image which is encoded with Internet address information of an advertiser or index information for specifying the internet address information. Then, the code image is printed, for example, on various products, gifts, leaflets, or the like, as printed media and provided to consumers. The consumers, on the other hand, can each acquire the code image provided as mentioned above using an optical device to extract and decode the code information encoded in the code image. In this way, each consumer can acquire the address information or the index information included in the code information. After acquiring the address information, the consumer can act on the basis of the address information. Thus, the consumer can enjoy the services provided by the advertiser. When the information acquired by the consumer is the index information, the consumer can connect to a predetermined server computer on the internet to acquire the address information corresponding to index information and then can act on the basis of the address information or the like. In this way, consumers can enjoy the services provided by the advertiser.
However, an information code simply indicated such as on a printed media can be easily copied by anyone by using a copying machine or the like. For this reason, the following problem could be caused. For example, a fraudulent code, i.e. an information code copied from an authentic information code with fraudulent intention, can be easily produced by anyone. Therefore, at a gate, for example, where entrance and exit are managed by reading an information code, such a fraudulent code cannot be detected unless the authenticity of the information code is determined.